“Action was brought by a wife against her husband for restraining her from wearing a hat of the newest fashion.
“Judgment for the lady.
“I will close,” continues History, “by citing a few of the thirty-one rulings of this Court of Maria of Champagne:
- “1. Love and economy do not agree.
- “2. Without good reason no one can be forbidden to love.
- “3. Love is not stationary. If it does not diminish, it will increase.
- “4. It is not loving to kiss and tell.
- “5. No man can love two women at the same time.
- “6. A woman should persist in her choice till all hope be abandoned;
- like persistence cannot be demanded from man.”
“Maria de Champagne was a profound jurist, but I doubt if she was a truly romantic woman,” replies Romance. “Were I not too chivalrous to expose to your commonplace laughter the gentlest yearning of a rude age, their uncertain groping for a vague ideal too noble for their actual conception, I could a sweeter tale unfold of Courts of Love of old.
“But if you will laugh at ideals of romantic love, laugh kindly with me over its merriest comedy, written by the saddest and most chivalrous lover of them all.
“Take down your files, Dame History, and find, if you can, another servitor of love as chivalrous to his lady as Molière was to his wife, a woman belonging to other men; Molière’s patience, like Griselda’s, ‘proceeded from no lack of understanding.’”
“You have wandered far from the romance of the days of chivalry for your chivalrous instance,” sneers History.
“I was following up the seed that chivalry sowed, the idea of the self-effacement of the strong in favor of the weak. But let us turn from the dramatist to the comedy, and by a short consideration of ‘Les Precieuses Ridicules,’ I may be able to make your point for you, ‘that the actual present is as romantic as the romance of the past.’
“At the beginning of this play, Georgebus, a provincial gentleman, has made arrangements with two satisfactory persons to marry respectively his daughter and niece. The girls are brought to Paris, where the candidates for their hands and hearts appear and come to the point at once. It seems the girls have been reading the romances of Mlle. de Scudéry, who has given them the idea that a lover should fall in love at sight, seek out his lady, woo her, and after gallantly surmounting many obstacles, win her. Georgebus perceives that the men depart in displeasure and investigates. He has observed that the girls are aping the manners of the ladies of the Court, which in Molière’s time were very affected. Georgebus’ daughter states her platform. It is rather romantic, but there are lovers nowadays that might fill the bill. She closes by saying, ‘But to plunge headlong into a proposal of marriage, to make love and marriage settlements go hand in hand, is to begin the romance at the wrong end. Once more, father, there is nothing more shopkeeper-like than such proceedings.’ Georgebus is unable ‘to make out the meaning of her jargon,’ while his niece adds that those gentlemen ‘have never seen the map of the Country of Tenderness.’ She is also dissatisfied with their dress.